Between the World and Me

"Written as a letter to the author's teenage son, this is a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son. Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men -- bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Coates shares with his son -- and reader -- the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. His 2014 Atlantic cover essay "The Case for Reparations," explored the U.S. history of housing discrimination. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and is the author of a 2009 memoir, "The Beautiful Struggle," in which tells the story of his childhood in West Baltimore and his relationship with his father, a librarian and ex-Black Panther"--Provided by publisher.

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'Between the World and Me' by Ta-Nehisi Coates was a good read. However, Coates writing style isn't to my liking. I found it made his arguments more amorphous and less clear to me. I'm not so sure that I actually understood him. And yet what I think I understood I liked.

Coates' writing style was for me, achingly beautiful. He has the knowledge and talent to draw connections that the reader may never have considered, but that are obvious once they've been pointed out. I will never look at the sitcoms I grew up with the same, as someone who grew up inside the dream. "Between the World and Me" is a total perception-shift in 3.5 hours and you must listen to the author read it himself.
~Alexa

There is nobody more eloquent, nobody more deep and thoughtful, nobody more insightful, nobody more powerful, nobody more strong and wise and in your face and just plain honest than Ta-Nehisi Coates. If you've ever read anything he's written in The Atlantic, which is where I first became a big fan, you know he's not a simple, quick read. He isn't writing to make you laugh. He isn't trying to get rich. He isn't particularly concerned with you, it seems. He is concerned, it seems to me, with learning hard life stories and sharing them in beautiful, powerful language.

Honestly, it takes me twice as long to read some authors than others. Some authors write so much like a friend talking to you on the phone that you breeze through their stories and laugh and learn a thing or two and feel great or smarter after you're done. This author, in everything he's written that I've read, is so eloquent that you can't just read while watching TV or on your laptop checking your mail. Or not paying 100 percent attention to what and how he is conveying information and knowledge. And it's knowledge you can get from this particular book: knowledge of what he knows about being in a black body in this time and place. And it's something I have no idea how you do without having a huge attitude. Instead, reading this is a guidebook to how to get through a day without getting resentful of circumstances and history. And how to get through a day without anger and blame. And how to be the best you can be, if you think about each word and really let it sink in.

Coates ‘letter’ to his son about being a person of color in the US when the American Dream is seen by most who think of themselves as white through a different lens.

He says: “Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement: to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need is to be white, to talk like they are white, to think like they are white, which is to think beyond the design flaws of humanity, has done to the world.’ Powerful.

"Dreamers" in America are those who consider themselves to be of the "White Race," which, in their minds, makes them superior to all those who do not to appear to be of the "White Race." Actually, there is no scientific basic for the 17th century concept known as "Race," a concept developed by northern Europeans for the purpose of justifying their horrific plunder of the non-European world. Today many individuals cling to their "Dream" because this automatically prevents them from being at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Only when these "Dreamers" realize their "Dream" is an unscientific concept developed by their ancestors to justify their lives of plunder will "White Supremacy" disappear in America.

Between the World and Me is an essay/letter written by Coates which is meant for his son. He writes about race relations in America and what it’s like growing up as an African American male. He doesn’t try to make any major points about race relations nor does he try to explain it. Rather, he just writes about his experience growing up and his concerns about his son’s future. Coates stated that racism was not something that could be eradicated, but was a part of American history and tradition. This a deeply personal book and is full of substance. It does not provide optimism that things will be better nor does it provide the answer to racism. It is simply a reflection of personal experiences and how he is concerned about his son’s future. I personally enjoyed this book because of how authentic it feels. I think this book is a 5/5 and is a must read for anyone.
- @SuperSilk of the Teen Review Board of the Hamilton Public Library

I knew this book was being compared to the works of James Baldwin when I started reading it, and for me it didn’t come anywhere close. I’ve liked what I’ve read by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, but I didn’t feel the same about this book. The book is addressed to Coates’s son, Samori. It’s supposed to be reminiscent of James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew, but that brief letter feels like it was truly written for Baldwin’s nephew. In Between the World and Me the book never feels like it really is for Samori. It is aimed at us, the readers. There is no sense at all of who his son is as a person or their family. There is no intersectionality in the book, with Samori’s mother almost being a passing character.

This book is a very intimate portrait between an African American father and his son. The author explains his thoughts so eloquently and makes the reader feel like we are in Coates mind and world. The audiobook is especially great since he narrates his own experiences and adds a depth to whats being read. This is an excellent choice for readers who enjoy the human and internal battles of Racism in America.

Quotes

“But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.”

I grew up in a house drawn between love and fear. There was no room for softness. But this girl with the long dreads revealed something else -- that love could be soft and understanding; that, soft or hard, love was an act of heroism.

"Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains - whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains."

(This book opens with a quote from Richard Wright that contains the title of the book):

And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing, stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms. And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me.

"Once, the Dream’s parameters were caged by technology and by the limits of horsepower and wind. But the Dreamers have improved themselves, and the damming of seas for voltage, the extraction of coal, the transmuting of oil into food, have enabled an expansion in plunder with no known precedent. And this revolution has freed the Dreamers to plunder not just the bodies of humans but the body of the Earth itself. The Earth is not our creation. It has no respect for us. It has no use for us. And its vengeance is not the fire in the cities but the fire in the sky. Something more fierce is riding on the whirlwind. Something more awful than all our African ancestors is rising with the seas…across the sprawl, is the automobile, the noose around the neck of the earth, and ultimately, the Dreamers themselves.” (150)

“…predictions of national doom. I had head such predictions all my life… [I knew] that this was all too pat, knowing that should the Dreamers reap what they had sown, we would reap it right with them. Plunder has matured into habit and addiction; the people who could author the mechanized death of our ghettos, the mass rape of private prisons, then engineer their own forgetting, must inevitably plunder much more. This is not belief in prophecy but in the seductiveness of cheap gasoline."

That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free… and I heard you crying. I came in five minutes after, and I didn’t hug you, and I didn’t comfort you, because I thought it would be wrong to comfort you. I did not tell you it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.

“The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”